


duet for two Hands in six baths

by thereinafter



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: 5 Times, Backrubs, Bathing/Washing, Developing Relationship, Divine Leliana (Dragon Age), F/F, Grief/Mourning, Kissing, Reunions, Romantic Fluff, waterfall sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-07-08 01:02:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19860982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thereinafter/pseuds/thereinafter
Summary: FiveSix different times Leliana and Cassandra ended up in a bathing-type situation together.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is its own little variant timeline not linked to anything else of mine, so far. (And thanks to Mytha for indirectly inspiring it.)

The sisters’ bathhouse at the Cathedral is sized to accommodate a great number of monastic women devoted to cleanliness, but at this time of the morning, Cassandra usually has it to herself. It’s a small pleasure to bathe alone in the skylit stone chamber with its rows of long, deep tubs and the bubbling dwarven-crafted boiler that delivers hot water on tap.

She lies back in the first tub and rests her head on one wooden edge, letting her toes touch the other. Maybe she overdid it today. Bruises feel ready to come up on her shield arm, and her legs are sore in an unfamiliar way from trying that new set of forms.

The door creaks, loud in the silence, admitting a draft and then someone humming a song. After a few seconds, she sighs and sits up enough to see.

The new Left Hand’s red hair swings over her face as she shovels more fuel into the boiler. The song becomes recognizable as “The Ballad of Highever Fields,” with a level of feeling behind it that grows charming in its determination. Does she think she’s alone, or not care?

Cassandra should have greeted her when she came in. They have only spoken a little, in the Divine’s presence, about her wishes for their service. She considers calling to her now. Then the boiler resumes its own bubble-and-whistle song, Leliana pulls her loose tunic over her head, and Cassandra quickly sinks back down.

Seeker training and communal quarters have left her unfussy about most nakedness; this impulse to pretend she saw nothing is silly. Before she can overcome it, Leliana’s footsteps approach the tub. Then she’s climbed in, pale legs sliding across, and Cassandra has seen her anyway, from spare curve of hip to hard graceful shoulders, with a warm startlement like falling into the bath again.

“Good morning!” Her voice is still less Fereldan than she looks. She reaches for the copper tap by the wall. Fresh heated water pours out in a cloud of steam. “You don’t mind, do you? I’ve wanted to talk.”

And Cassandra has been curious about Her Holiness’s unusual choice of spymaster. That is, before now. “Sister Leliana. No. Good morning.” She pulls her feet in and folds her arms under the water, trying to be matter-of-fact. Her bruised arm twinges.

“Oh, don’t call me that unless you want to be ‘my lady Pentaghast.’” She looks over her shoulder and smiles, like she already knows the precise degree of annoyance it provokes. Her eyes are good-humored and alert.

“Just Leliana, then.”

Leliana turns off the tap and sinks down neck-deep onto the tub bench, below the rippling skylight reflections. She closes her eyes and stretches both hands over her head. “It’s a good time for this, isn’t it? No one here. I hope I haven’t ruined it for you.”

“Not at all.” Cassandra has no exclusive right to the baths. She reaches for her scrub brush, for something to do.

“I didn’t follow you on purpose.” Leliana opens one eye. “No, that’s not true. Mother Dorothea, or rather, our Most Holy Justinia, Fifth of Her Name, believes I should make friends with you. She was quite firm about it.”

“Well,” Cassandra says, “I do not breathe dragonfire, whatever the novices and templars say.” She begins to scrub herself, resolved to act ordinary.

“I’ve heard that story.” Leliana chuckles and tilts her head to wet her hair. “Among others.”

“I won’t ask.”

“There may be too many to tell. I know soldiers talk, but I never suspected the elite knights of the Chantry would be such gossips.”

Of course they would talk to her about anything. Cassandra herself has been lulled by her conversation. It must be an asset, this ability, for a Left Hand.

“Seekers excepted, so far,” Leliana adds.

“Don’t count us out. We have more than enough downtime for stories.”

She slicks her hair back, blinking away water, then smiles. “I’ll have to keep that in mind.”

Looking for more to scrub, Cassandra applies the brush to her fingernails.

“After the very short practice I just had,” Leliana goes on, “I could wish our templars had less time to crowd the field. Or perhaps I’m simply not used to sharing.”

It’s a near echo of her own thoughts before her bath; Cassandra chuckles. “New recruits are always trying.”

“Oh, I’m sure.” Leliana gives a wry smile and reaches over the tub edge for a pouch she must have brought, lying beside Cassandra’s things. Lithe muscles shift in her back.

She didn’t mean— “Templar recruits, I meant. You can order them to leave, sometimes.”

Leliana makes an amused noise, then raises her head and gestures to the small cut-glass bottle near her hand. “That looks much nicer than what I brought.”

“Rosewater.” Cassandra puts down the brush. She refuses to be embarrassed. “I enjoy it in a bath on occasion.”

“May I?” On her nod, Leliana unstoppers the bottle, inhales, and sighs in appreciation. “I have some lavender and other things, but this is very good. Is it from a Val Royeaux house? I don’t recognize the mark.”

Not a single predictable joke. Cassandra smiles and leans back on one arm. “It is Nevarran. Add a little to the water if you like. I was about to.”

“I will.” Leliana tips a few drops out between them and breathes with a blissful expression as the scent rises, then returns the bottle to its place.

She sets her pouch on the edge of the tub, takes out a piece of soap, and works it through her hair. Cassandra casts about for another thing to do with her hands and the rest of herself.

"It’s still hard to think of myself as Hand of the Divine. My former life in Orlais and Ferelden was … very different. I may need your advice, adapting."

“By all means.” The Cathedral houses many sisters who came from other lives, but none has made her feel this provincial and fascinating simultaneously, like some blue-eyed inquisitive exotic bird. Cassandra has the urge to prove herself worthy by telling her things. If it’s a spy’s trick, it’s working.

“There is a place I often go when the templars' field is crowded,” she hears herself say. “A courtyard in a vacant part of the south wing. I could show you.”

Leliana comes up from rinsing her hair, shakes it, scattering drops, and beams at her. "I’ve been learning many secret corners of this place, but not that one, yet. Yes, please."

“Tomorrow, then?” Cassandra leans forward a little, not thinking about her hand on the edge until it hits the precariously balanced pouch, spilling loose herbs and soap and small jars of who-knows-what into the water.

She grabs for it too late and curses, right before Leliana does. "Maker. I wasn't looking. Let me get this." She begins fishing them out as crushed lavender and embrium spread across the surface.

Leliana breaks into giggles. "No, no. It’s my fault. Here." Her hands are fast, and they collide once, twice, a warm overlaying in the cooling water. The first time is a small shock; Cassandra drops what she's holding and Leliana catches it before she recovers. The second, Leliana's fingers close around hers to capture the same jar, and she lets go quickly and apologizes.

"I will replace them for you,” she says when she hands Leliana the last wet jar. Her fingers are neat, short-nailed, rough in different places. Cassandra remembers she plays instruments, too.

"It's nothing to worry about," Leliana says, chuckling. "I don't even use this shade of rouge." She drops the jar back into the pouch. "Your bath will only be more fragrant, I think." Damp lavender petals cling to her arms, and she rinses them away.

Cassandra smiles, ruefully. "I should stay so it is not wasted."

"You should, since I can't, unfortunately."

It's foolish to feel a stab of disappointment. A splinter, perhaps. It's only that her company is so unexpectedly well fitting, as if they already counterbalance each other.

“But first, let me just ...” Leliana reaches to pick a whole wet flower off Cassandra's shoulder, smiling. A quick soft touch, but the sensation persists; entirely chaste, but she feels a suggestion of something else.

It’s confusing in a way she may like, which seems to sum up her experience of Leliana so far.

“Thank you.” Cassandra concentrates on picking more petals off her hands as Leliana climbs out of the tub.

"I will see you with Most Holy later, I suppose?"

"I assume so." She glances up to see Leliana pulling on a clean shift. "If not, you can find me by Andraste’s flame at dawn."

“I will.” Leliana gathers up her belongings. “Wouldn’t miss it.” She falls back into humming as she bundles clothes under her arm and leaves.

The late morning sun reflects from the water across the now-quiet room, moving bright lines on the wall. Cassandra lies back, wondering what she has gotten herself into now, admitting she looks forward to it.


	2. Chapter 2

An early spring wind blows clouds across the moon and a wet chill through the streets of Jader’s Merchants’ Guild quarter; Leliana pulls her hood lower over her face as she walks.

She stops in front of an outwardly rundown establishment, glances up at its peeling sign, then pushes through the door.

Inside, a candle burns on a carved stone table beside an open ledger. A stocky dwarf woman in leathers sits with her feet up, absorbed in a copy of some serial adventure story.

Leliana sets her gloved hand on the table. “I reserved the bath for the evening?”

The dwarf pulls her feet down and closes the book over her finger. “’Nightingale’?” She nods toward an interior door. “Your friend’s already here. Sign for it.” She turns the ledger toward Leliana.

Cassandra’s signature slashes across the last line. Of course she’s used her real name, if not the whole thing. Leliana smiles and adds her alias beneath it.

The hot stone steam baths were among her few pleasant discoveries in Orzammar, and they’re hard to find on the surface. She came upon this one during her advance scouting, and thought Cassandra would appreciate it after her long trip accompanying Justinia here. But it’s still a surprise that she’s come when invited; Leliana was more than half expecting a messenger with her regrets, or nothing.

She exchanges her clothes for a linen towel in the next room, descends a set of stairs, and opens the heavy door into the bath, ducking the low lintel.

It’s a narrow, dim, and fiery space, lit by a bed of smokeless coals in the center of the floor that surround the hot rocks. Amid the clouds of steam, she can make out the shape of Cassandra on one of the stone platforms, reclining with her back to the entrance; but she doesn’t react to the door opening. Is she meditating or asleep?

Wondering how long it will take her to notice, Leliana cinches the towel under her arms, crouches down, and creeps quietly through the steam. The stone all around is glistening and damp, the floor left rough to prevent slipping. Condensation trickles down her skin in a handful of places as she moves.

When she’s hovering right beside her and Cassandra still has said nothing, she slides hands lightly over Cassandra’s eyes from behind. "Guess who."

"If it weren't you, they’d already be on the floor.” Her tone is drowsy, humoring, and her eyes stay closed.

Leliana laughs and lets go. "Then I'm lucky to be me," she says, although the unbidden image in her mind is not exactly a deterrent.

And she is lucky. These last few months, she has been doing the work she believes she’s meant to do, whether at Most Holy’s side or away from her, inspired by her presence every day. Just last night, she wrote to her friends in Amaranthine of how happy she’s been, though there are many details she cannot reveal.

On top of that, the operation for which she arrived here early is succeeding better than she planned; she will have a great deal to report to Justinia in the morning.

Leliana moves to the platform beside Cassandra’s, fanning steam out of her face and re-tucking her towel around her. "Ah, my contact was right about this place. Do you like it?"

"The dwarves really are the experts in these matters. I feel like iron ore in a furnace.” She leans to dip water that hisses onto the rocks. “After today, I needed this."

Leliana smiles in private satisfaction and stretches out to let the heat soak in. This place has no Carta connections and would make a decent clandestine meeting point—if she were meeting someone who hadn’t signed her name to the register in glaring big letters—but either way, they’re not likely to be overheard here.

They lie in easy silence, breathing slowly. Steam fills her lungs. Outside concerns slowly evaporate. Everything is slow except fire and water and presence in the moment. She imagines, pleasingly, that this is how high dragons feel on nests underground.

“It took so long to settle her in,” Cassandra says, after some time. “They were sadly unprepared at the castle. As if we had not sent flocks of ravens beforehand.”

Leliana shakes her head. “Is she all right?”

“Oh, yes, now.” Cassandra snorts. “I won’t even mention the journey here. A thousand little problems. Most Holy was ready to ride, but the lord chancellor wished to wait for the coach, and so on. And when we stopped at the chantry, the revered mother was not very helpful.”

“That’s not surprising,” Leliana says, “given what my people have found on her. I suspect she will change her tune soon, or step down.”

“Well,” Cassandra says, “after they finally found suitable rooms for Most Holy, and she retired for the night, I came to meet you.” She sighs. “I was sure I was late.”

“No, that was me,” says Leliana, and smiles over at her. “I’m glad you came, after all that.”

They talk between more lazy silences, occasionally throwing more water on the stones: conversation ranging across the weeks they’ve not seen each other, filling in the gaps for each other and the state of Justinia’s affairs.

While Leliana is describing where she found her newest agent, Cassandra brings her knees up to hug them, makes a face, and starts trying to twist around and rub her own back.

“What’s the matter?”

“My back is an unholy mess of knots,” Cassandra grumbles. “I must be getting old. Riding never bothered me before.” She stretches one arm behind her. “And the worst where I can’t reach.”

“Want me to do that for you?” Leliana jokes.

With a backward glance, Cassandra raises an eyebrow. “If you are serious, I will try anything.”

Leliana is taken aback. She is not usually easy to surprise, and Cassandra keeps achieving it.

But they’re friends, have fallen into it so naturally that it feels years old, not months. And this is a natural thing to help with, is it not?

It is true that she’d like to. She has eyes, and Cassandra is … famously hard not to look at, especially on a companionable training and bathing schedule, especially when one has learned to make her smile. Still.

Leliana collects her towel, now heavy with water, and moves to the edge of Cassandra’s platform, where she has turned onto her stomach and is reaching to point to the problem area.

She touches it lightly. “Here?”

“It will take more than that.”

Leliana laughs and puts more of her weight behind her fingers.

“Yes, there.” Cassandra rests her face in her arms. The light of the coals casts her in dramatic relief: rise and fall of muscle over solid elegant bones, hair clinging in damp points along the nape of her neck.

The steam is, naturally, condensing on her too, but Leliana resists dwelling on that.

She digs the heel of her hand into the tight spot, businesslike, working the stiffness out.

Cassandra makes an approving noise and rounds her back up into the pressure. “Thank you,” she says in emphatic relief. “Of course you are good at this.”

Implying she’s thought about it? Has she? Leliana is alight with sudden curiosity, but only says, “Is that good?”

“Can you go a little higher?”

And so, because she asks each time, Leliana follows the tension in the muscles flanking her spine and fanning across her shoulder blades, then sinking in at the small of her back, latticing over her ribs. There is still quite a lot.

Her movements unconsciously lengthen, become slower and rhythmic as the radiant heat and steam force controlled breathing. Water or sweat slides down her own back. She can feel her pulse in her hands and her ears.

Whether this is just a friendly favor is coming more into question the longer it lasts.

Cassandra’s occasional soft pleased sounds make her bite her lip to avoid doing the same. She considers not looking, closing her eyes, and immediately realizes that wouldn’t be easier.

She could just stop first, of course, move away, back to her own side, but she doesn’t want to; she doesn’t want to lift her hands, and by now she’s incandescent to know where this goes.

Leliana doesn’t know how long she’s spent trying to melt her into relaxation before Cassandra abruptly pushes herself up to face her, turning in the circle of her arm.

“Thank you,” she says, in a huskier voice, “Leliana,” and their gazes lock.

Their faces are so close, and she can’t think in this oven, or she can only think about her hands, her skin, how much they are touching, how she really didn’t plan this and that’s very surprising indeed—

As if they both decided at once, their lips meet. Sweet, agonizing, careful.

Leliana breathes again, and promptly chokes indecorously on steam.

Cassandra pulls back, panting herself. “Was that—all right? I don’t—”

She coughs out a laugh. “Oh—yes. Yes, thank _you_.”

“Then—”

“I’m more than all right, if we can try that again.”

They laugh then together, giddy, leaning forward on each other, catching their breath. And when they kiss again less carefully she isn’t thinking at all, only flaring brighter and brighter.

Leliana doesn’t know which of them is truly responsible for this or what will happen beyond tonight, but she’s in no hurry to go out into the cold.


	3. Chapter 3

The weather in the Dales has been unusually warm for the Divine’s visit, the air too heavy and sticky to move, the sun boiling down through it.   
  
Cassandra squints at the road, shading her eyes, and feels a headache building behind them. The height of the afternoon is not when she would choose to be riding, but this day is not going according to plan. As she has already told Leliana, at length, calmly and objectively.

"Your plan," Leliana corrects. "I had someone to meet. On Most Holy's business."

"While she is expecting us today at Halamshiral."

"You don't even like the Winter Palace," she says, unperturbed, fanning her flushed face. "And you could have left without me."

That she is right about both things does not help Cassandra's mood, after waiting for her all morning in the small and gossipy common room of a place called the Portly Nug. "You could have said something instead of vanishing into thin air."

"It's too hot for this. You can keep fighting with yourself about it. I'm going to ride ahead." Leliana shifts her seat, clicks her tongue to her horse, and it breaks into a canter, kicking up the light dust of the road.

Cassandra coughs and tastes grit as she disappears around a rock formation. Dust coats her face, clinging unpleasantly, like the underlayers of her clothes.

Beatrix’s progresses around the empire were regimented, stately, tedious affairs where she felt like a decorative statue. Justinia has given her more varied and ambitious work, and she is striving to meet the Divine’s high expectations—but also annoyed at herself for snapping at Leliana, whatever the reason. She doesn’t really want to fight. With her, that is. Leliana has been a bright spot in everything.

Cassandra wishes something else would attack right now so she could destroy it, and have some justification for this armor in this heat. She wipes her forehead with her glove, but it just smears sweat and dirt around.

She grumbles and lets the horse plod on in the dust, through a hot, dull afternoon.

On their map, this road follows a small river, but she hasn’t set eyes on it all day. At last, she comes to a place where before her the terrain drops, and the river cascades in a broad fall out of the rocks and spreads out broad and slow, glimpses of it shining below amid dense trees.

Hooves scrape on the stone behind her. “That looks _amazingly_ refreshing,” Leliana says, not explaining how she looped back. “I intend to stop and bathe when we get there.”

The sparkle of the river and the shade of the trees are tempting. “The horses will need water,” Cassandra concedes. The decision immediately makes her feel less peevish, as does getting out of the sun, when the road winds into the valley.

The air smells fresher near the river, and a breeze finds its way down to ruffle the leaves. They tether both horses in a grassy spot on the bank where they can drink. Nearby, under an arching oak tree, an old jetty of mossy boards and pilings stretches out into the water, which is clear and deep.

Before Cassandra is done pouring out the horses’ supplementary oats, Leliana has slipped out of her one or two layers and run to dive off the end, slicing in cleanly, then surfacing to shake her head. “It’s perfect,” she calls. “I won’t let you leave.”

Cassandra wishes for such ease. She decides to shed the armor for the rest of the day at least, gradually stacks pieces by the tree, adds the sweaty padded doublet, and pulls off her boots one at a time. If nothing else, she can sit on the jetty for a few minutes, cool her feet, and wash the dust off.

As she’s finally kneeling to splash water on her face, Leliana swims back over and pulls herself up, resting her arms on the edge, wet hair sleek and dripping over her skin. “What are you waiting for?”

“It does look inviting.” Leliana’s smile says it’s meant to. “I am envious, but there’s no time for me to bathe now. We should go soon.”

Leliana kicks closer and takes possession of her hand. “Oh, are you sure?”

With the last word she throws her weight back, and Cassandra, unprepared, meets the river with a shout and a splash.

After the unbalancing, pleasurable shock of immersion, she splutters and surfaces beside a piling, water in her eyes and dragging at her clothes. “ _Leliana_!”

She laughs from not far off. “That took no time at all.”

Cassandra glances at the riverbank, then back at her, then kicks off the piling to grab for her.

“You won’t catch me like that.” Leliana slips out of her grasp and takes off downstream.

Cassandra is weighed down by breeches and shirt that, to be fair, she wanted to wash, so that swimming after her is more like attacking the water than gliding through it—but it’s satisfying to stretch out and chase, exhilarating to run with the cold current, and she will be avenged for this.

Leliana seems mainly interested in feigning laziness until she gets within reach, then escaping creatively. She kicks along on her back with flutters of her feet, then dives under as soon as Cassandra’s fingers brush her toes, coming up further downstream, or behind her, or on the other side of a fallen tree, or tugging her down and slipping away again.

Finally, in a sandy waist-deep shallows by the near bank, she lets herself be trapped and taken down, with laughing shrieks.

"I’m sorry I pulled you in,” Leliana says, turning in Cassandra’s hold and wiping droplets from her face, “but it was very gratifying." The sun refracts through the ripples around them, illuminating pebbles and waving plants. Her shirt floats away from her back; Leliana’s naked arms go around her under it, warm contact in the cool water. "And, about this morning, I _am_ glad you waited."

Leliana’s hair brushes her neck like riverweed. Cassandra lets go of her fixation on their arrival time. "I admit I’ve been insufferable today.”

“And so am I, sometimes.” Leliana chuckles. “In which case you may do me the same favor.”

“I will take your word for it. Someday I may be accustomed to having such an … active Left Hand."

Leliana’s further chuckle at this can be felt down to her toes, and after a moment Cassandra kisses her cheek through her wet hair.

“I promise, Justinia isn’t going to mind,” Leliana says, and moves to make it a real kiss. Her hands get tangled in the long shirt. “Let me take this.” She peels it over Cassandra’s head, then takes a breath and ducks under, lips forming more bubbling words as she separates her wet breeches from her skin, with difficulty. Cassandra considers helping, but she’s too amused by how long it takes.

“Well, that was really all my fault,” Leliana says after surfacing, making her laugh out loud, and lobs them onto the bank with a splat. “I’ll show you active. I want to know what's behind that waterfall, don't you?"

“It sounds like you are trying to lose another race.”

“Excuse me, I didn’t lose anything.”

“Give yourself a second head start if you must.”

Leliana stands up in mock offense, dripping. “Oh, no, you go ahead. I’ll catch you.”

Cassandra smiles at her and promptly launches herself back into the river, striking out for the waterfall. Walking would be faster than swimming from here, but she doesn’t mind the challenge.

The current is weaker near the banks, and she kicks hard against it, dragging herself upstream, cutting through the water more cleanly now. Clouds blow in overhead, and she feels a cooler wind on her back. When she looks up to breathe, she doesn't see Leliana, but does hear splashing behind her.

She slowly passes the jetty where they started. The falls get closer, the sound combines with the general rush of turbulent water, and she loses her sense of where Leliana may be—until, as she’s crossing a deeper cold spot, a hand closes on her ankle, hobbling her rhythm and tugging her back.

She jerks her leg forward, but Leliana clings with a cry of victory, then wrestles her under, making herself a warm resilient snare that Cassandra has no will to break out of. Especially after spending the day not wanting to fight her.

Leliana’s naked strength and yielding, the way her touch softens after a second, make her head swim as much as holding her breath. She rolls with her underwater, air escaping a bubble at a time as they tumble in this embrace.

When their heads surface, Leliana laughs, arms still around her neck. “I said I would catch you.”

“We are tied, then.” Cassandra treads water and leans her forehead into hers, not letting go of her.

Nearby, the cliff rises into slides and terraces of green, eroded stone behind the falls. “Come on,” says Leliana, nodding toward them. “You can fulfill my secret wish to be kissed under a waterfall.” When Cassandra laughs, she grins. “It is a terribly romantic thought, no?”

Cassandra pulls her up over the worn-smooth rocks, and Leliana pushes her through the sheets of water, into a shallow mossy niche where all she can hear is thundering and the air is full of spray and it's like looking up from the bottom of the river.

Half in and half out, they wedge themselves together, interlaced. She tastes clear water and the warmth of Leliana’s skin, the falls beating over their heads, drowning out sound.

Leliana’s thigh opens hers, Leliana’s tongue opens her mouth,   
and she pulls her closer, awake all over as she’s not been all day. They move against each other experimentally, sliding and catching each other, pinned by rocks.

Leliana has a hand on her breast pressing back and a hand in her hair pulling them together, her mouth full of articulate hunger, drawing Cassandra’s body over her, fitting the limber curve of her waist to her arms.

Up against a soft patch of moss Cassandra works her hand between them, feels her slipping hot through her fingers, pulls her down hard against them wanting more of her, feels Leliana’s lips shape more words she can’t hear until she convulses in her arms, soundlessly panting and laughing.

“Wait a minute,” she yells over the roar, “I wanted to try something else.”

Then she slides to her knees on the rocks and pulls Cassandra's legs forward into the rushing water, and the falls and her mouth are cold and warm, short sharp strokes and long enveloping ones, overwhelming her with alternating and simultaneous sensation until she can't tell them apart.

“That was worth the bruises I’m going to have,” Leliana shouts again, leaning in out of the water.

When they emerge into the air again, wind is tossing the branches and throwing up wavelets on the river, and a dark bank of cloud is piling up overhead.

"Maker, it's about to rain!" Leliana scrambles down the rocks. "Come on!"

Remembering her armor unprotected by the tree, Cassandra takes off after her, and they run naked like fools back to the horses, who also need moving to shelter. By the time they have their templar-issue oilskin tent up, it's pouring and they're muddy and punch-drunk with laughter.

They use one blanket to dry themselves and the important gear, and curl up in the other while rain buffets the tent.

“So sad we can’t ride any more today in this,” Leliana says behind her, mildly smug.

“We could.” Cassandra is only contradicting for the sake of pedantry. “I have—”

“No, no, it’s impossible.”

“Well, you are right that imperial visits are not my favorite part of the job.”

Leliana laughs and hugs her. “I should hope not.”

“If Justinia is disappointed, you can do the explaining.”

“I promise ten times over that we can get to the palace in the morning and not miss anything you’ll mind missing," she murmurs into Cassandra’s ear.

Cassandra leans her head on her arms and watches the rain through the flap, content with her state and content to believe her.


	4. Chapter 4

The falling snow comes down in great starry flakes, almost blotting out the sickly green light of the tear in the sky. Between the trees, Leliana's tracks are still plain; she left this way, walking fast, with no effort to hide.

Cassandra glances back at the straggling circle of people praying in the dark chantry, then picks up a candle stub, lets the door close behind her, and follows the trail.

The path to the hot spring cave was once well used by the residents of Haven, but less so now with the threat of demons and death looming overhead. She sees no tracks but Leliana's, quickly disappearing, and her own in the fresh snow.

Leliana has not slept, that she’s seen, for two days, has barely eaten since they learned the Divine was missing. They’ve been holding the demons back, searching the temple ruins, their small remaining force taking losses they can’t afford. On her return from the forward camp, she was covered in someone else’s blood and her face was a set, stony mask. Not visibly distressed, to the others, maybe.

The steps get longer, haphazard, unlike her, and then there is a crumpled cloth half buried beside the path, a handkerchief that was a gift from the Divine. It’s stained with rusty fingerprints. Cassandra scrubs at the embroidery with clean snow that turns to bloody water. She rises and walks faster, pushing aside the memory of Justinia carefully stitching nightingales.

The cave is a small recess in the side of the mountain, under an overhanging rock. Vapor from the spring has frozen into long dirty icicles around the entrance, above the old wooden door that she has to lift on its hinges to drag open.

It’s warped by steam, and latches with a hook through a ring in the stone that she fastens behind her. The darkness inside smells like wet earth and the hot mineral stink of the spring. She pulls off her gloves, brushes snow from her hair that melts in her fingers.

A single candle burning a few paces away dimly illuminates the surface of the pool and Leliana’s things piled at the edge. Water ripples, and her silhouette moves in front of it, rising.

“I followed you,” Cassandra says, unnecessarily. All she has to offer is obvious truth. “May I … ?”

Leliana subsides into the water.

She takes out the candle stub from the chantry and picks her way around the pool to the other candle, then lights hers from it. The two flames reflect on the pool’s surface, the wet stone all around, the eroded carving of Andraste in the wall. Leliana is a pale shape on the edge of the light, methodically scrubbing at her hands and arms with pumice.

Cassandra finds a usable niche in the rock for her candle, then undresses and climbs down into the pool. Sulfurous steam envelops her, and salts burn the cuts and raw places of the past days. She feels her way through it, pushing through the murky water and hunting with her feet for a path.

When she can nearly touch her, Leliana looks away and her face contorts, like she’s forcing down hopelessness. Cassandra’s heart trips up painfully in her chest. She reaches to take the stone, to embrace her.

Leliana stands frozen for long moments before she seizes her back, fiercely tight, and turns against her shoulder.

“I found your handkerchief.”

“It was another scout I couldn’t save,” Leliana says, voice flat and drained. “His blood. Her little birds. I couldn’t—” Her body quivers. “How will we do this without her, Cassandra?” She begins to shake with violent, tearless sobs that trouble the water.

Over these endless nightmare days, Cassandra has not cried either. She is afraid to permit it while nothing is safe. But Leliana’s despair wrenches at her, and she sees again in vivid horror the dead faces of friends, the hope of peace destroyed, the atrocity defiling the sky.

She remembers her last sight of Justinia at the Conclave, unaware it was the last time; the knowledge sinks into her like lead. It’s over. How can it not be over? All the futures no longer possible, all the people they can't reach back for. The Breach, growing worse every second, the existential fear of not knowing how to stop it.

Her throat closes and she buries her face in Leliana’s hair, gathers her in, fighting not to weep herself. Her eyes burn. Leliana’s fingers dig into her back, clutching at her bones, it feels like.

Then the grief and anger swallow them, ugly and unromantic and ripping: everything they’ve been holding back to protect the survivors, everyone they have lost, everything they may yet lose.

It comes at them in waves, and she holds on to Leliana, tears hot as blood on their skin, cornered animals braced together in the dark water, in the terror that they may not be enough.

* * *

When the storm of feeling at last recedes far enough to breathe, like it’s beaten itself out for the moment, she is battered, shaken, sweating. She sniffs back tears. Leliana’s grip on her eases, and she takes shuddering, looser breaths.

She smooths Leliana’s hair back and strokes her cheek over and over, filled with renewed anger at the world, part of her wishing to go out and hunt down more demons, take any action against this pain. It will not be over.

“You live,” she tells Leliana. “I live. We do whatever we can.”

Leliana swallows, then looks up wet-eyed with the same defiance she feels in herself. “Yes.”

“I love you,” Cassandra says, another small obvious truth.

“Just do not leave me here, or I’ll ...”

“I don’t intend to start now.”

She doesn't laugh through her tears as she might have on another day, but her mouth does curve up a little, firming.

“Thank you for finding the handkerchief. Of course you did.” She spreads her hands and frowns at the raw skin. “It would be worse to lose it, no matter what.”

They cup water to wash each other’s faces, lips rough with bitter minerals and salt like absolution. Leliana murmurs verses of the Chant softly, and Cassandra takes what comfort she can in them, and the enigmatic gaze of the roughly carved Andraste overhead.

After a while, when it feels easier to speak of everyday things, Cassandra says, “You need to sleep. Have the herbalist make you a drink.”

“Maybe,” says Leliana, moving toward the edge of the pool.

Cassandra knows she will not, and makes a mental note to bring it to her. “The mage Solas tells me the prisoner should wake tomorrow.”

“She must know something.” Leliana presses her hands together and looks up to the carving. “He says she is linked to the rifts. Maker, let her be the key.”

“Or else she is the guilty one.”

They fall silent in the steaming dark of the cave, watching the candles burn.

“We will question her together,” Leliana says, and Cassandra nods.


	5. Chapter 5

The chamber is full of clear light, falling through impossibly tall windows, taking on a thousand colors high above, sparkling on equally clear water: stark new year’s light.

White stone walls extend around the five-sided, mosaic-tiled sacred pool, framing frescoes of the life of Andraste. When she attended the Divine here before important ceremonies, Leliana never touched the water, but it will be pure unheated rainwater. On the far side burns a long sunken brazier, lit from the Cathedral’s great flame.

She is barefoot, dressed in a plain undyed robe without fastenings. She curls her toes on the chilly floor.

Her return has been both comforting and terrifying. Familiar places receive her differently; people withdraw from her or surge toward her; memories ambush her around every corner. And she must find a new way to fit, become a new person with another new name. She understands why Justinia was often strange in the early days.

Besides Schmooples the Second and Boulette, the dear things, only Cassandra still sees her as herself. Leliana thanks the Maker for it. And that she stayed, despite the clerics' attempt to play them against each other. And for her presence now, in this bright room on this morning, a quiet encouragement.

Each Divine-elect chooses her own officiant and witness for this rite, and Seekers are empowered to perform certain sacraments; Cassandra agreed to it weeks ago, went through separate preparations that she didn't talk about, spent time memorizing the words, practiced them with her last night in the dark.

She is as ready as she can be. For this part, anyway.

Leliana glances at her and nods. Cassandra presses her hands together and a flash ripples out through the air, the ritual cleansing a templar might otherwise do, leaving it charged as if before rain. She steps back and mouths, “Go.”

Leliana takes a breath. Looks at the pool. Shrugs off the robe and lets Cassandra take it. One foot in front of the other.

She looks up at the radiant windows vaulting high above her reach and feels like a child again, in the light and hush of the estate chapel when Lady Cecilie led her in.

She is afraid to hold up so much; but it’s a hopeful fear and not a dreadful one, an ascending awe rather than the sinking horror she felt after the Haven Conclave. What remains of the Chantry chose her, needs her, and Cassandra and the others believe in her, and she can only believe there is good enough in her to serve.

The water is as cold as it is clear, prickling her skin into gooseflesh as it covers her feet, then rises to her knees with the next step. The tiles are a smooth glassy gridwork, a reminder to centuries of Divines to walk carefully.

After the last step down, the water reaches her shoulders. She wades to the center and pauses to quiet her mind again.   
Justinia’s memory and legacy are heavy all around, as if she is looking down. Leliana lets herself feel the love and forgiveness she wishes they could share, and hopes for her blessing.

Then she wades to the left until she’s facing the first image of Andraste: the Prophet in her youth, among spring flowers, white and gold.

Cassandra picks up the crystal ewer beside it and kneels by the edge to pour more water over her head.

Leliana controls her breath, refusing to gasp at the chill, and silently asks help to sing. She’s been rehearsing Andraste’s prayer for days and falling short too often. The arrangement she chose sounds simple, but is far from it.

_O Creator, see me kneel …_

When the notes pass through her without cracking, she puts her gratitude into the song.

_… for I walk only where You would bid me, stand only in places You have blessed, sing only the words You place in my throat …_

Her voice resounds in the vaults of the ceiling, comes back, and leaves a greater hush she’s hesitant to break. A shiver passes from the crown of her head to her tailbone.

The purification must continue once begun. She must advance, and turn her eyes to Andraste leading her people over summer mountains, gold and red. Cassandra pours the second ablution over her, a thin wash of cold through her hair, and she lifts her voice again in determination.

_… my Maker, know my heart_   
_take from me a life of sorrow, lift me from a world of pain, judge me worthy of Your endless pride …_

The light in the room seems to brighten, unearthly. She sees her own life’s work, all the forms her service has taken, the others who have served with her and strengthened her. She catches Cassandra’s eye and smiles.

She pushes through the water to face Andraste before the walls of Minrathous, plains stretching sere and burnt, red and black.

_… my Creator, judge me whole,_   
_find me well within Your grace, touch me with fire that I be cleansed, tell me I have sung to Your approval …_

She sees those who gave their lives, the Blight and Haven and all the other battlefields. As the water sluices down her face a third time, her voice threatens to shake but does not.

The final verse at the last station of the four: a winter sky, Andraste risen to the hand of the Maker, black and white.

_… O Maker, hear my cry, seat me by Your side in death,_   
_make me one within Your glory_   
_and let the world once more see Your favor …_

The last note echoes in tension as Leliana ascends the steps on the last side of the pool, as if it carries her into the air.

Soft-footed, Cassandra moves swiftly to the far side of the brazier, setting the ewer down on the small altar there, scattering a dish of aromatic herbs on the bed of coals.

And then she can sing the descant, completing the song:

_For You are the fire at the heart of the world,_   
_And comfort is only Yours to give._

And she can breathe freely again, set down small and wet and shivering.

The physical fire before her crackles: the same fire that has burned in the Chantry’s heart for ages of time, at the hand of every Divine, ready to accept her in turn and give her back new.

Cassandra warned she would not sing, but her voice is steady as she gives the ritual response, Andraste’s other prayer from Transfigurations, watching her through the heat-shimmer.

_For she who trusts in the Maker, fire is her water._   
_As the moth sees light and goes toward flame,_   
_She should see fire and go towards Light._

The fire is low and narrow enough for anyone to step over, as many aged Divines have, and at the same time symbolically vast. Leliana walks toward it with the ending lines.

_And she will know no fear of death, for the Maker_   
_Shall be her beacon and her shield,_   
_her foundation and her sword._

She takes a few running steps and jumps, a flash of warmth on her legs—

And on the other side Cassandra catches her, with a kind of formal reverence, an awed light on her face, wrapping her in more clean linen that tames her shivers—and she herself is smiling uncontrollably with the release of tension, brightness around her, wobbly on her feet, filled with the joy of passing through a mystery.

To finish her part, Cassandra touches her quickly with ashes on her lips, hands, and heart, then reaches for the other dish, honey to remember the sweetness of life.

Leliana tastes it on her fingertips, heightened and golden after the day’s fast. Her head spins with a love for everything that feels uncontainable, and on impulse she presses closer than the reverent distance to share it with a kiss.

Which, officially, nothing says she can’t do.

When she breaks it, Cassandra looks mildly shocked and bemused, but happy, as if they have enacted something more binding than only a purification.

“Start as I mean to go on, no?” Leliana whispers.

Cassandra laughs a little and snugs the cloth tighter around her, blotting water from her hair. ”I do expect no less.”

When the fire has dried her enough to dress, she finds her underclothes and shoes, and Cassandra passes her the new white robe to put on and then the red. It feels strange, but not wrong.

“Are you ready for the grand clerics?”

“Let’s go.”

With Cassandra at her right hand, still tasting ashes and honey, Leliana pushes open the doors behind which they wait to crown her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since canon is pretty silent on what any Chantry ceremonies are like, I made one up for a sacred bath. (also; I know I missed having a Skyhold one before this, so if a good enough idea comes to me I may still add it in)


	6. Chapter 6

  
Surfacing from sleep, Leliana rolls over and feels the letter crinkle under her hand. She smiles.

The predawn light is enough to read the handful of words again. Cassandra has always protested she is bad at letters, but every page of blots and strikethroughs and frustrated additions is nearly like having her here.

She breathes the paper and ink, and throws her arms out across the bed with a sigh. Well, not quite; though her directness can still be surprising in writing, and Leliana cherishes some of those passages especially.

But this one says she returns today, after much too long at the new Seekers’ monastery.

Leliana pushes the covers aside. First the dawn prayers, and the daily meetings, and then some time to arrange something appropriately different.

* * *

When her study door closes behind the lord chancellor, Leliana closes the ledger he left her and pages through the sheaf of designs for a replacement chapel window. Her last task today is to approve one so that the repairs can proceed on schedule.

The drawing with the most eye-catching style also has a tiny procession of nugs marching in the border below Andraste. She chuckles at this bid for attention—her fondness for them is one fact she’s allowed to be public—but they truly are charming. And none of the other designs are as well executed. Well, then, she will play to type and the window will honor the Maker’s most darling creatures. She jots down the artist’s name and a direction to the stewards, and stamps it with her seal.

Leliana lifts off the Divine’s headdress, rubs her temples, and stretches the kinks out of her back. There. No one else looking for Most Holy outside a life-or-death situation will find her today.

Outside, she strolls through the courtyards, letting the late spring sun soak in and considering.

Her final scheme has several elements, of which the most essential is a raven from the first gatehouse Cassandra passes, so that the water will be hot.

At the half-built monastery, she happens to know, they wash from buckets, or in a snowmelt stream, and the mountain is too rocky for gardens. (As she walked she cut the richest-smelling of the new roses and plucked the petals into a bowl herself, a satiny-crisp shower of reds, a beautiful private joke.)

Cassandra’s room has been aired and scrubbed into the spartan shining state she prefers, and a tub brought up from the cellars that looks wildly out of place and must have been a past Divine’s chief indulgence. (Victoria is not too exalted for the bathhouse, but not today.)

As she waits, Leliana rearranges a tray: some good wine, a new book, a cold platter from the kitchen with the tiny strong Nevarran confections she likes, the rose petals. Beside that, a note, and a box of bath-preparations from the more decadent Val Royeaux perfumers, the sorts of things she rarely buys herself. (Leliana has no such reservations, and many thoughts about trying the ones she hasn’t.)

In the rookery she waits some more, feeding the birds and making conversation with the sisters, and when the raven comes fluttering in, she orders the bath filled, hot enough to last.

There are a hundred ways she could keep eyes on Cassandra from here, but she restrains herself and paces the halls, imagining what she may be doing instead: perhaps now arriving at her door, setting down her saddlebags, shaking her head, a gradually brightening smile as she discovers everything.

She won’t turn down a fresh hot bath after that journey, and certainly not this one, Leliana thinks she can say. So, then, now she will be undressing, dropping her travel clothes on the floor (and going now to help with that is a temptation, but not the plan).

And now perhaps lying back in the water and closing her eyes, letting a sweet melt on her tongue, or leaning to open the book with a careful dry hand, unable to resist her curiosity, or just washing off the sweat and dust, which Leliana can imagine well enough to warm her body as she walks.

A little perversely, she savors the last bit of waiting. When she decides it's been long enough, she lets herself return to the door on quiet feet and knock.

“It’s me,” she says, against the door.

When she hears a faint, decisive “Come in,” she breaks into a smile before slipping inside and latching it behind her.

“Was your ride very long?” She crosses the room in a few steps. “Do you need anything? More hot water? Or—”

“Come _down here_ ,” Cassandra interrupts from the bath, takes her hand and pulls her down as she feels her smile broaden.

Her kiss is pointedly grateful and long. Their fingers lock together, she smells like soap and roses and herself, and Leliana feels at home again, though she hasn’t left.

“So,” she says, now kneeling by the carved edge, “you liked it.”

“There is plenty of room in this ludicrous tub. So can you.”

“Is that a proposition?”

“I could have pulled you in just now. Your Holiness.” They laugh, faces leaning close. Cassandra brushes Leliana’s hair back, and it clings to her wet hand. “Was sharing not your plan? I have missed you more than all of this.” Her glance encompasses the room, the half-finished food, the wine, the water.

“No need to ruin these, then.” Leliana lets go and stands. She reaches behind her for her buttons, quickly, enjoying the way Cassandra’s look reflects her own anticipation, frank and restless, as she folds each part of the Divine’s vestments over a nearby chair.

“The cellar-brothers say the tub dates to the reign of Faustine II. I was curious about whether I would fit, I will say, but she must have been less dull than she seems.” She climbs in, and sighs as the water and Cassandra’s arms enfold her, at the tight, abrupt relief of fitting together.

The bath is still hot. Stretching her toes to the end of the tub, Leliana relaxes in contented expectation. Cassandra kisses her cheek from behind.

She takes her hand again and examines it, intertwines their fingers. No different from when she left, this time. “And I’ve missed you. My bed is full of letters from you again, you know.” She feels Cassandra’s mouth curve, pictures the abashed expression she knows is there, and grins.

“I said I would try.” Cassandra squeezes her hand. “But I am no competition for you. I opened one of yours one day in front of poor young Seeker Theodric and almost choked. He would not believe I was well. I had to accept a home remedy to escape.”

“Perhaps I should start double-sealing them. Which one was it? For future reference.” She’s eager to discuss trivial things just to hear her talk, feel their voices’ counterpoint, after so much mute paper.

Cassandra clears her throat. "It was the one where you had ... ideas about your desk in the Divine's study. Many of them."

Leliana does remember this, and laughs, curling around against her. "Oh, yes. I had been working very late. My imagination ran away with me."

"I did not say they weren't interesting."

“Noted.”

After a prolonged and enjoyable pause, Cassandra says, "The ride was long, but not hard. And you have everything here I could want."

“Mmm.” Leliana waves a hand toward the box of bottles. “Did you have a chance to try it all?”

“Of course not. It is all beautiful, but I don’t know how I could in that time. Or what half of those are.”

“I could help with that.” She unfolds herself and reaches for the box, patting her fingers dry.

She picks up a round bottle at the front. “Leclair compound number seventeen, balm of night-blooming flowers. I have used this—it’s lovely for your skin.” Cassandra makes a noncommittal noise, so she sets it down and reads off the next few. “Gill's captivating salts. Oil of the shadow-of-violets. Lydean dreaming salve.” Above them is a tall smoky fluted vial. “Severin's effusion of five blackened resins, which I have not tried, but sounded quite fascinating.” Beside it, “Imperial crystal grace essence, Picardie's proprietary prismatic philter—”

At this Cassandra breaks into a laugh. “These names are pretty but nonsense. Let me smell … that one.” She points.

“All right.” Leliana pulls a small crimson-sealed bottle from the box. “Hundred-glories attar?” She pulls the cork, and a warm spiced rose-gold scent tickles her nose. She passes it under Cassandra’s, who closes her eyes and inhales.

“I do like that.”

“Shall we try it?”

Cassandra takes the bottle from her. “I think _I_ should try it on _you_.”

"Absolutely." Leliana leans on the carved leaves at the tub edge. “Maybe while I read to you?”

“You have always known me too well.” She pours the aromatic liquid into her palm, a few stray drops escaping down her forearm before she can catch them.

Leliana reaches for the tray and pages through the book. Outside, the sky over the Cathedral is streaked with pink clouds, and this room is placed high enough for light to stream in, golden and unimpeded, at this hour before sunset.

Cassandra is never what she’d call languorous, of her own accord, anyway, but she can be deliberately, formidably attentive, like this. She leans close behind her and strokes a slow line down Leliana's left arm, staying clear of her fingers on the book. Then the other arm with her other hand, releasing the scent further. She leans her chin on Leliana’s shoulder to see the pages, and asks, “That one?” when she finds the beginning of a poem.

Leliana starts to read, but keeps losing focus on the words as Cassandra smooths the attar over what feels like every inch of her skin above the water, and she can almost taste the hundred glories: back up, curling around her wrists, up her neck as she lets her hair fall forward, down over her shoulders and ribs, up her belly to run light trails over her breasts, until she feels like a glistening anointed creature.

She manages to read to the end of the first long poem and then another. Because her distraction amuses both of them, she lets herself gasp between lines, repeat herself, and insert small praises and exclamations that make Cassandra laugh.

Maker, she has missed that sound. She knows they have all night; she planned it that way; nothing they share is forbidden to Divine Victoria, or anyone, anymore.

Then, as she is embellishing another silly compliment, Cassandra's left hand dips to her inner thigh, and her lips touch between her shoulder blades, and Leliana feels her breathe in, and suddenly she can't wait longer.

“Oh, I just need this right now.” She drops the book, and slips back from the edge against her.

“I missed you so much.” Cassandra buries her face in her neck. “This,” she says, “I—”

Leliana covers both her hands with her own, kisses the right one. “Hmm?”

“When I write to you. I don't have the words to say it.”

“And I have so very many.”

She twists to face her then, and leans in and whispers, and marks her with scented skin, until their embrace turns hungrier and the tub feels too cool.

“We should—”

“Yes.”

And they stand up, splashing and disentangling, climb out dripping, and lead each other to Cassandra's tidy bed, which isn't for long.

* * *

Night has closed in around them, the curtainless windows starred with reflections of their few candles, when Leliana leans over her, catching her breath.

Without lifting her head, Cassandra gives her a slow smile that fills her half-closed eyes, amber and shadow.

Leliana smooths still-damp strokes of hair across her forehead. “Don't sleep yet,” she says. “I want to hear about everything else you did for the Seekers. I have so much to tell you that’s happened here.”

“It is not as though I’m leaving again soon. Unless you have some new plan.” She clasps Leliana’s arm in a quicker grip. “But I don’t need to sleep if you don’t. Tell me.”


End file.
